Vested Interest - February 1999 Issue

The President’s Thoughts

As most of you already know, the Illinois Legislature has re-convened with the swearing in of the Ninety-First General Assembly. There will be thousands of bills introduced during this session which will have potential impact on every area of the law. Fortunately for ITLA, we will only have to monitor about 100 to 200 bills of the estimated 3,000 that will be introduced in the next few months.

We at ITLA look forward to building on our accomplishments of the past. In the Ninetieth General Assembly, we were able to pass changes to the Dram Shop Law and the Governmental Tort Immunity Act. Legislators on both sides of the aisle recognized that these items were areas of law that were in dire need of change and worked with ITLA and other groups to pass these important pieces of legislation.

In this legislative session, our agenda will again be two-fold. We will advocate legislation that is fair to the consumers of Illinois and we will oppose legislation that will eliminate, reduce or restrict the rights of the people of Illinois.

Some legislation that ITLA will be supporting will include the re-enactment of the Structural Work Act (HB 210) and the reversal of the Burrell decision (HB 232) regarding the limiting of health care liens to one-third of the sum paid to an injured person. Another bill that we feel will be beneficial to all ITLA members is House Bill 1244 that will limit the amount of money that can be charged for copies of hospital or medical records.

Another major piece of legislation that will be debated this year is the Patients Bill of Rights and managed care reform. ITLA will again advocate that any real reform in managed care will have to include the right to sue.The House passed HB 626 last year which included the right to sue while the Senate passed a version that did not include this provision.

ITLA will also be involved in the Y2K issue. For those of you not familiar with Y2K, there are groups in Illinois seeking immunity for problems relating to the Year 2000 computer bug. We have already seen legislation proposing toimmunize State and local governments (HB 293) and anticipate further legislation for the banking community and business. The House of Representatives has set up a new committee on Computer Technology to deal with Y2K and other related computer issues.

We also anticipate introduction of bills that would re-enact at least parts of Public Act 89-7 that was declared unconstitutional in 1997. Some form of caps on damages will almost surely be part of any “tort deform” bill that is presented to the General Assembly. There will also be many other bills that will have immunity and liability provisions included in them.

As you can see, this year’s legislative session will be quite a challenge for ITLA. We will keep our members posted on all activities in regard to these and other legislative issues. If anyone has any ideas or thoughts regarding legislation, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Martin J. Healy, Jr.
President, Illinois Trial Lawyers Association